Lahore: Christian and Muslim rights activists united to fight against kidnapping and forced conversion of Christian girls

Pakistani Christian and Muslim human rights activists have joined hands and launched a campaign against the increasing kidnapping and forced conversion of Christian girls.

According to details, Pakistan had witnessed an increasing trend of kidnapping and forced conversion of Christian girls. In this regard, Christian and Muslim rights activists have united launched a New Year’s campaign to embark upon the huge issue of “abduction and abuse of Christian girls and young women who are often forced to marry Muslims and convert to Islam.”

While speaking in this regard, a Pakistani Christian lawyer and rights activist Sardar Mushtaq Gill whined, “The kidnapping of Christian girls and forcibly marrying them to a Muslim is the most common procedure for forced conversion to Islam.” Gill who also heads the Pakistan-based advocacy group Legal Evangelical Association Development (LEAD) said that LEAD in collaboration with the Muslim Friends Foundation, have emphasized on the issue that in most of the incidents, “police are reluctant to take any legal initiatives against the culprits.”

Muslim Friends Foundation is a Pakistani Muslim rights group which has taken upon the task to draw attention to neglected issues for example reluctance of police to assist the victimized Christian girls and their families.

Targeting Christian girls “a pleasurable activity for a Muslim man in Pakistan as he wins sympathy of other Muslims by telling them that he has converted a Christian girl to Islam,” Mushtaq Gill remarked.

Mushtaq Gill remains hopeful that the ‘Movement of Women Rights Awareness’ campaign will provide sound grounds for creating awareness about this issue while at the same time the authorities would be urged to intervene in the abduction of Christian women and girls.

“We don’t have any issues with a person who converts to another faith with her free will and get married with free consent, but when someone is abducted, forcibly converted and married then it is difficult to keep quiet.” To remain silent about women’s human rights would be “an act of sin towards them and particularly here at LEAD,” he exclaimed.